01.19.07
9:30 p.m. CST Friday, Jan. 19, 2007
Mission Control Center, Houston
STATUS REPORT: ISS07-04
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION STATUS REPORT #07-04
New supplies arrived at the International Space Station Friday night
as an unpiloted Russian cargo spacecraft docked to the Pirs Docking
Compartment.
With more than 2.5 tons of food, fuel and supplies for the station's
Expedition 14 crew, the ISS Progress 24 automatically docked to Pirs
at 8:59 p.m. CST (5:59 a.m. Moscow time Saturday) as the station flew
220 miles above the South Atlantic off the southeast coast of
Uruguay. The 24th Progress to visit the station launched Wednesday
night from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Unlike its predecessor, Progress 24 linked up to the station after its
automated rendezvous antenna retracted as planned in the final 50
meters prior to docking. On Oct. 26 the automated navigation antenna
on the Progress 23 failed to retract. Expedition 14 Commander Mike
Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin will conduct a
spacewalk in late February to manually retract and tie down the
antenna before the older Progress undocks from the aft port of the
Zvezda service module in early April.
The crew will open the hatch to the new Progress overnight and
deactivate the systems of the newly arrived craft before its cargo is
unloaded over the next few weeks. Progress 24 holds 1,720 pounds of
propellant for the Russian thrusters, 110 pounds of oxygen and almost
3,300 pounds of spare parts, experiment hardware and life support
components.
In addition to preparing for the cargo ship’s arrival, the Expedition
14 crew worked this week on a variety of station maintenance tasks
and science experiments. Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Suni
Williams reported what they ate and drank, and collected blood and
urine samples as part of an experiment known as Nutrition. The
experiment looks at how the human body processes nutrients in
microgravity.
Lopez-Alegria replaced limited-life components in the Volatile Organic
Analyzer (VOA), part of the Crew Health Care System. The VOA is a gas
analysis system used to assess the levels of organic compounds in the
station atmosphere, some of which could become harmful to the crew in
high concentrations. The old components will be returned to Earth on
the next shuttle mission.
Williams focused on work with lentil seedlings as part of an
experiment called Threshold Acceleration for Gravisensing, or
“Gravi.” The experiment uses a European Modular Cultivation System
centrifuge to document the effects of varying levels of gravity on
the development of plant roots with an eye toward growing edible
plants for future, long-duration spaceflights.
Tyurin worked with a number of Russian experiments, including an
instrumented workout on a stationary bicycle to collect data on ways
to limit bone and muscle density loss associated with long-duration
spaceflights.
All three crew members also spoke with experts on the ground planning
the upcoming Expedition 14 spacewalks. Lopez-Alegria, Tyurin and
Williams will begin on-board preparations for those spacewalks along
with a fourth to remove the navigation antenna from Progress 23. The
first three spacewalks by Lopez-Alegria and Williams are designed to
continue outfitting the newly activated cooling systems for the
station’s truss and to continue preparations for the relocation of
the P6 solar array truss structure.
For more about the crew's activities and station sighting
opportunities:
http://www.nasa.gov/station
The next station status report will be issued on Friday, Jan. 26, or
earlier if events warrant.
-end-